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What Is Resveratrol?
It sounds like the ultimate lifestyle wonder drug - that promotes youth, slimness and sexual allure at the same time as protecting against heart disease and cancer.
Impossible? Not to researchers investigating a substance called resveratrol, which they believe could be the holy grail of the pharmaceutical industry: a single drug to counter "lifestyle" illnesses and improve sex appeal.
"If there is such a thing as a true anti-aging molecule, I would expect the sort of findings we have had with resveratrol," a leading molecular geneticist from Harvard University said last week.
Tests are showing that resveratrol can help body cells to repair themselves and — a potentially huge selling point — speed up fat-burning within the cells. If it really does work, it is a drug company's dream: a pill to help you stay young and slim.
Experts in London are also in the hunt. "We got very excited about resveratrol and we still are," said Louise Donnelly, a researcher at the National Heart and Lung Institute in London, whose work has been sponsored by Pfizer.
As well as its other benefits, resveratrol also seems effective against asthma.
"There is no question it is a very interesting molecule," said Tristan Booth of Royal Mount Pharma, a firm developing the drug for an American government colon cancer research project and also as an anti-viral agent.
The compound was discovered in grape skins and red wine, when scientists were trying to unravel the "French paradox" — how it is that the French can consume copious quantities of alcohol, meat and cheese without succumbing to high rates of disease. Resveratrol may be the answer. Now the race is on to create and test synthetic forms — and it is not the only wonder drug on the horizon.
What is in Resveratrol?
Resveratrol is a polyphenolic compound found in the skins of red fruits as grapes, plums, and the red skin of peanuts.
01/11/2004 A study found that resveratrol, a polyphenolic compound found in the skins of such red fruits as grapes, plums, and the red skin of peanuts, has the potential for applications in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, and possibly even arthritis.
The study found that resveratrol has anti-inflammatory activity as shown in trials with laboratory cells lines as well as `real` human airway epithelial cells or HAEC. It’s found that resveratrol inhibited anti-inflammatory mediator release from human airway epithelial cells in a way that is contradictory to earlier conjecture that resveratrol acts as an estrogen or glucocorticosteroid.
Although resveratrol has the anti-inflammatory activity, there is no evidence indicating that use of wine or even pure resveratrol can lower the incidence of COPD, asthma or related diseases. The problem may be with its bioavailability. Resveratrol can be deactivated in the liver before it reaches the target cells.
The study was conducted by Louise Donnelly and colleagues from the Department of Thoracic Medicine, National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College London, England. The results were published in the October issue of American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology, a journal of the American Physiological Society. |
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